the years that stretch between us
by DarkBrightness
Summary: The road twists and turns and drops off cliffs, but it always leads them back to each other. One-shot, Fuu/Jin/Mugen.


Why am I writing Samurai Champloo two years after I finished the series.

I'm a Fuu/Mugen shipper, but this only really shows one-sided Fuugen. I thought of Jin having more of a brotherly relationship with Fuu.

Disclaimer: yeah I don't own Samurai Champloo.

* * *

Fuu twisted her hands in the fabric of her kimono, knuckles white and fingernails digging into her palms. She stared ahead unblinkingly, spine stiff and straight, and kept on walking.

_(Don't look back, don't look back, don't—)_

She could still hear their retreating footsteps, the scuff of sandals on the dirt path. A sound etched into her eardrums after two years on the road. Two years of sweat and danger and hunger and sunlight and adventure and friendship.

_ (Don't look back, don't look back—)_

Two years and both her parents died in their sickbeds, the life draining out of their eyes in that one final breath. And now she was left behind, motherless and fatherless and without even a crazy goal to cling to anymore. Fuu had been constantly moving for what felt like an eternity, sleeping under the stars and in the trees and eating whatever came her way.

But she hadn't been alone.

Fuu supposed that was what she was scared of—the void that her mother had left behind, the place that had been achingly empty for months before she met the two samurai morons who finally filled it.

(_Don't look back—)_

She listened to the departure of the two best friends she had ever had, and felt the void go empty again. She could picture them right now—Jin's hands would be resting on his sword hilt, gray eyes alert and wary. Mugen would be sauntering along with his arms behind his head, cocky as ever, not even bothering to keep an eye out for trouble.

Fuu told herself she would see them again.

She didn't believe it for a second.

—

The road stretched out before him long and straight, summer heat rising in waves above the dirt. Jin was alone; he had not seen another living soul since he split with Fuu and Mugen. Dust formed clouds around him, clinging to his clothes and itching in his throat.

The air was silent.

It was a strange feeling.

The old Jin had loved the quiet—and hated when it was interrupted. But after traveling with two companions for months, it was odd not to be bickering with Mugen and not to hear Fuu's endless complaining. It had irritated him at first, but—

But he had fallen into the routine, and it had become all he knew. But arguing with Mugen had become something he did for entertainment rather than out of anger. But Fuu was fifteen, fifteen and innocent, and he only wanted to protect her. But he had started to like it. But it was better than being alone.

Jin thought of Shino—tall, slender Shino with sad eyes and a gentle smile—and wondered if she ever thought of him, or if she had already been swallowed up by the concealed darkness that lurked in the convent. The love he had for her had been an explosion, a burst of sparks and flames that had lit him on fire, but even fire dies eventually.

He thought of his master, of katana-flashes in the night and blood splatters on shoji paper, and realized he would never forgive himself.

Jin drew in a breath, and wondered if he could ever let go.

—

Mugen slapped three coins down on the counter and glanced to the right and to the left, receiving glares from the two men sitting on both sides of him. The bartender nodded and filled a wooden bowl with chicken noodle soup, sliding it across the counter to Mugen. He inhaled the whole thing in one long gulp, then swung around to make sure Fuu hadn't caught him spending their money.

Damn it. He had forgotten again. Fuu was gone.

Chocolate brown eyes and girlish giggles and pink kimono—gone. Mugen's fingers twitched spastically on his chopsticks.

Not that it should have mattered.

(But it did.)

He had depended on no one for his entire life—never knew his parents, or if he did, he had no memories of them. Few lasted long on the convict island where he had grown up. All he could remember was three kids barely scraping by, stealing food and moving from hideout to hideout and learning the hard way that no one could be trusted.

If Mugen had ever relied on anyone, it would have been Koza and Mukuro, and perhaps that was why their knife in the back had hurt more than any of the others.

So what the hell _was _it about that girl? Fuu was bossy, annoying, thought she knew everything there was to know, and couldn't even be left alone for ten minutes before getting in trouble. Without him and Jin, she wouldn't have made it past the first town.

In fact, it wouldn't surprise him if she was already dead by now.

Shit. The thought made his stomach churn. Her pink kimono stained crimson with blood, the warmth leaving her body, her eyes going empty—

Mugen had taken countless lives. He had grown up on an island of corpses; had blown up entire fleets of ships; had killed samurai and gangsters and policemen and prostitutes.

He had never loved anyone before.

No, that wasn't true. There had been Koza—tiny Koza, quiet Koza, the only person who had ever taken care of him, Koza, who had left him to die.

And then there was Fuu, the girl who had basically enslaved him in a mission he knew nothing about, the girl with a sunny smile and too much attitude for her own good, the girl that he stupidly, stupidly loved.

And he had left her behind.

Mugen turned back around, and ordered a glass of sake.

—

Five years later Fuu found herself walking barefoot down an achingly familiar path, her shoes dangling from her fingers and the birds tweeting overhead. It was finally spring after a long, harsh winter, and the air around her was comfortably warm as she made her way to the place where she had been raised.

She didn't know what she expected. The house where she had grown up would have been devoured by nature several years ago. The crops had probably withered, left alone with no one to look after them.

Just like Fuu had withered.

She missed all the friends she had made, Osuzu and Shinsuke and Yuri and even Sara. She missed a quiet samurai in a blue kimono who could barely see without his glasses and had taken care of her better than anyone. And she missed a gruff stubble-faced jerk who wore a mask to cover the brokenness inside him.

Fuu jerked out of her dark loneliness and into reality when she saw it.

Yellow.

Suddenly she was six years old again, running through the tall green stalks, leaves snagging on her kimono and scratching her face, but her father's silhouette only got farther and farther away on the horizon.

She was standing in a sea of sunflowers, turned golden by the sun. They brushed against her thighs as she waded through the field, and she reached her fingers out to touch the soft petals.

Fuu sank down to her knees, surrounded by sunflower-sunlight and spring life and childhood memories, and thought that maybe there was hope after all.

—

The nuns at the convent shook their heads and told him that Shino was _long gone—guess she finally got tired of waiting for that samurai she was always talking about_.

Jin supposed it was his fault. Even after she had been at the convent for two years, he had delayed coming back for her for almost another whole year, until he finally got sick of being alone.

He wondered how much more guilt he could take before he cracked under the weight.

He wouldn't look for Shino. Not if she didn't want to be found. Not if she had established some semblance of happiness. Jin wouldn't ruin that for her.

That meant going back to the road. Back to the silence. Back to the empty spaces that should've been filled by a pink kimono in front of him and a mess of dark hair next to him.

Fuu and Mugen. His first friends. His only friends.

It amazed him, that he still missed them after all this time.

Jin always was a man who lived in his past.

Only now, he had no goal—he didn't even have a place to return to, or old matters left unfinished. (Except one matter, a matter concerning two people who had changed his life.)

So there was nowhere left to go. (Except one place, a place where three friends had once found something that resembled closure.)

Nagasaki.

—

The moon was full and bright overhead and the waves crashed against the rocks, droplets spattering onto his skin and clothes as Mugen stared across the bay.

Almost six years ago now he had attacked a pirate ship in this very bay, and that ship had blown up, deafening booms and billowing flames and the bitter taste of betrayal on his tongue.

And it reminded him of another cliff, back in the hellhole where he had grown up (Mugen refused to call it _home_ the way Fuu and Jin had when they talked about their birthplaces—it wasn't home now, and it never had been). A cliff where he had told some police soldiers to piss off and jumped to the sharks.

He had survived both instances, and now he was back, alive and well.

(The _well_ part was a lie, but that wasn't the point.)

What the hell was he doing, anyway? There was nothing for him in Nagasaki. Nothing but bad teahouses and old blood and Ikkitski Island, looming on the horizon like a scar that would always remind him.

But Mugen went where his feet felt like walking, and for some reason he felt drawn to this city, where a quest had ended and a friendship had began, but fallen short in the end.

He remembered the three brothers he had killed, the fiery vengeance in their eyes and the ruins of that old church and the deathbringers that appeared in his dreams.

He remembered a samurai who he had once wanted to kill, an always-serious prick who was stronger than Mugen would ever admit.

He remembered a girl tied to an old cross, blood trickling down her chin and bruises marring her pale skin, but her eyes were still bright and hopeful when they met his.

Mugen could live a thousand lives and still never deserve a girl like Fuu.

But that didn't mean he could stop trying.

—

Fuu found work in a Nagasaki teahouse, the kind of place where jerks came to stuff their faces and drink their fill. It was the only place that would hire a klutz like her, other than the brothels, and that wasn't even an option in her book.

It was a boring day if someone didn't lose a hand and a rare one if someone didn't get killed right there at the bar. The only days that were good were the ones where she didn't, for once, get groped by a forty year old. And those days didn't come very often.

She hated this city. There was nothing here but old memories.

It was a particularly bad Friday night. There had already been two murders that day, one over who got the sexiest entertainment girl and one over who got the juiciest chicken leg.

Fuu slapped away the man's hand before it got anywhere close to her, and set the tray down with a bang for reinforcement. "Enjoy your food," she said sweetly, with a sour smile.

She turned to serve the next table and ran straight into a very tall, very solid person. An apology began to weave its way out of her mouth, but was cut short when she looked up to meet the man's face. He had to be almost seven feet tall, with sharp angles for facial features and black eyes that were focused directly on her brown ones. Fuu gulped, and turned in the opposite direction.

One arm encircled her middle before she could get away, pulling her against him and digging into her gut with huge fingers. The other hand clamped against her wrist, keeping her trapped.

Fuu started assaulting him with every insult she had ever learned, from convict-island slang to defeated dojo curses, and her voice rang out through the teahouse's crowded, steaming center room.

Two heads turned.

Two swords were pulled from their scabbards with metallic _shings_, one a proper dojo katana, the other a rouge criminal's blade.

And the teahouse erupted into chaos.

At the end of things, several men were dead, several tables were sliced in half, and Fuu was bleeding from a cut on her cheek.

And two heavy-breathing men were standing in front of her.

Candlelight reflected on glasses and sword blades alike. They looked a little older and a little more tired than she remembered. Jin's hair was longer and Mugen was even less shaven than before.

But they were standing in front of her.

Mugen and Jin.

Jin and Mugen.

Fuu made some kind of sound halfway between a laugh and a sob, and then she was hugging them both.

She supposed that no matter where the road led them, they would always find each other in the end.

* * *

I don't even know what I'm writing about anymore.

I didn't edit this very carefully (read: I didn't edit this at ALL) so if there are mistakes I apologize.

Please don't fave without reviewing!


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